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Do many people think that ADHD is not real?

739 replies

Ilovecranberries · 20/07/2020 16:28

Was having remote drinks with a friend and his wife yesterday. She's a secondary school teacher in a quite "rough" school (not in the UK). I was quite surprised when, discussing something quite abstract about how different people think and react differently, she had said quite breezily that the majority of teachers she knows "don't believe" in the existence of ADHD.
Incidentally, one of my children is currently being assessed for it, but it is not news that I had shared socially outside of my immediate family. I wasn't offended, but I wonder if it is actually a widespread view behind the closed doors?

OP posts:
Vodkacranberryplease · 26/07/2020 11:46

I suggest you look at Dr Daniel Amen who does brain scans called SPECT scans. Proving it.

And read the fucking thread.

Are we really all wrong? All imagining it, making it up? There's no blood test for depression or in fact for many serious illnesses but they exist.

If you think we are even close to understanding the human body or brain you are insane.

Vodkacranberryplease · 26/07/2020 11:48

Oh good lord ive just seems that's the BMJ from
2000.

20 years ago

What a total and complete fuckwit.

KittyFantastico · 26/07/2020 12:20

A report from twenty years ago? Because Lord knows nothing has changed in that period of time.

From the NHS website today, twenty seconds ago rather than twenty years:

Diagnosing ADHD in children depends on a set of strict criteria. To be diagnosed with ADHD, your child must have 6 or more symptoms of inattentiveness, or 6 or more symptoms of hyperactivity and impulsiveness.

Note: strict criteria, i.e., not possible to simply rock up to the clinic and purchase a diagnosis because you want to be absolved of parenting.

To be diagnosed with ADHD, your child must also have:

- been displaying symptoms continuously for at least 6 months
- started to show symptoms before the age of 12
- been showing symptoms in at least 2 different settings – for example, at home and at school, to rule out the possibility that the behaviour is just a reaction to certain teachers or to parental control
- symptoms that make their lives considerably more difficult on a social, academic or occupational level
- symptoms that are not just part of a developmental disorder or difficult phase, and are not better accounted for by another condition

NHS funding being what it is, di you really think they'd spend money on diagnosis of a neurodevelopmental condition if it was fabricated?

KittyFantastico · 26/07/2020 12:29

This part of the criteria:

symptoms that are not just part of a developmental disorder

is why DS couldn't be diagnosed with ADHD despite displaying symptoms as his autism and particular set of traits made it too difficult to differentiate what was ADHD, what was sensory seeking, what was communication difficulty, etc.

AhBallix · 26/07/2020 12:31

@dadshere
The argument that children other than those with ADHD can display some of the traits, does not stack up. Of course little Joe can be inattentive - perhaps he is distracted by a difficult home life or maybe he is tired for one of many reasons. Mary is a bit fidgety. William has forgotten his homework. The symptoms of ADHD are not new personality traits never seen before. But if a child displays a group of specific symptoms which are persistent and detrimental to their development , education and social interactions, then they can't be dismissed as part of the normal run of things.

As pp mentioned, depression is not measured by a physical scan or blood test. Everybody feels a bit down from time to time or has days when they don't feel like getting out of bed or seeing their friends, but it tips into clinical depression when the person's life is adversely affected for a prolonged period of time. I'm sure you don't believe that depression doesn't exist just because it can't be measured by a physical test.

KittyFantastico · 26/07/2020 12:33

I'm sure you don't believe that depression doesn't exist just because it can't be measured by a physical test.

I'd put money on him being the sort of person who really does believe depression doesn't exist and is simply a case of "bucking up".

ComeOnBabyPopMyBubble · 26/07/2020 13:18

@dadshere around that same time we were also supposed to believe that vaccines cause autism.

It's a good thing medicine doesn't stagnate or stops researching/improving or we'd still be treating people with leeches.

Vodkacranberryplease · 26/07/2020 13:33

It seems that the so called sticking point for many of these people is the perception of naughty children with bad parents blaming it on ADHD.

And I'm going to say that unfortunately it's human nature to create a medical excuse for a lifestyle problem - for example overweight people with 'thyroid conditions'. People on diets with 'gluten intolerance'. Men with colds who have 'the flu'.

Does that mean that the flu, thyroid conditions and gluten intolerance don't exist? No of course not. It means that you see an appropriately qualified doctor and get a diagnosis and formal treatment (apart from the flu - then you just stop whining. See also the 'my DH is tired' thread).

However in pretending ADHD doesn't exist you are in effect removing that option for people who have it and whose children have it. You are tarring everyone with the same brush - but if someone tells you they have gluten intolerance you don't force them to eat bread. You don't say to fat people 'it's not your thyroid ffs. Stop eating junk'

As it happens I am somewhat sceptical of the high number of food intolerances and allergies that have sprung up - but people can and do die from them. So there's another explanation probably to do with our artificial diets and antibiotics.

But ADHD is mostly genetic and can be traced back generations. That you can not argue with. That is not 'modern living'.

Buttybach · 26/07/2020 14:00

I have it diagnosed and medicated age 40
For those saying that diet and mobile phones and lack of parenting cause it...
I was brought up with extremely healthy food. My mum cooks everything from scratch and we didn't have pop or sweets.

I come from a very middle class family with a very stable family life.

I had not much technology due to being a child of the 80s

I did 16 hours of gymnastics a week so it certainly wasn't a lack of exercise.

My daughters childhood has been extremely similar to mine. Yet here we both are with it.

drspouse · 26/07/2020 14:02

Of course children who don't have ADHD sometimes show symptoms of ADHD. Children without dyslexia sometimes make mistakes reading. That's why for this type of disorder you need quantitative diagnosis.

Buttybach · 26/07/2020 14:04

This was found in my parents family health book published in 1985.
It was a UK book and very dismissive of American treatments.

I was even assessed for focal epilepsy as I would totally zone out

Do many people think that ADHD is not real?
HoldMyLobster · 26/07/2020 14:27

Evidence and belief in ADHD : Informed decisions on stimulants must be based on studies with good methodology

...and ideally those studies should not be 20 years old, right?

Galvantula · 26/07/2020 14:28

@Buttybach your life sounds similar to mine. Home cooked food, not much junk, hours of sport a week, fairly ordinary life.
Diagnosed in early 40s.

I was mostly just fixated on reading as a child although I did love our ZX Spectrum when we got it Grin

I got in trouble at school for daydreaming, chatting way too much and not finishing my work in time. I got through school ok and scraped through a degree.

Always with a feeling of overwhelm in certain situations and a trail of losing and forgetting things.

Arrival of DC added a new layer of chaos, mess and a million things to remember. 🙈

I had zero idea that my problems could actually have an explanation, completely thought I was just useless.

TrainspottingWelsh · 26/07/2020 20:46

If anyone could have cured their child's adhd with diet, lifestyle and firm boundaries it would have been mine.

As I said upthread, I was born with horses at home and pretty much with them daily from birth, and vile parents aside had a privileged rural upbringing, pony club and roaming the countryside etc.

I never really had a sweet tooth and the closest we came to processed food was the odd shop at M&S, most things came from home or neighbouring farms etc. I recall mentally categorising spreads as the normal jam and the one with the label.

My mother was the type of parent that didn't believe being violently sick was a good enough excuse for a small child to make a mess, and was emotionally abusive to the point that even then I would have been taken into care if ss had bothered to look past the house and wealth. A dx of adhd would never have been considered a reason for showing some basic parental support, let alone an excuse for the huge and ever changing list of apparently unacceptable behaviour. My father generally just backed her up, but also thought smacking was a good way to cure impulsiveness. It didn't.

I was well behaved at school, barring the same occasional harmless moments in common with nt dc, and was able enough to do well even though my mind was often elsewhere. At home I was usually too busy trying to avoid my mother, or anything that would set her off, to misbehave, and in truth I was so pony mad that I would have spent every free moment outside either way.

The only thing I ever did that was 'bad' by nt standards were dangerous, impulsive things on occasion. And make my own entertainment at night when I didn't need to sleep like other dc.

I never really spent enough 1-1 time with my father to say, but he definitely had the hyperactivity and hyper focus. However various tales about other ancestors and memories of older relatives strongly indicate I was just the first to be dx.

@dadshere perhaps you should petition mumsnet for a fuckwit board where your bullshit opinions could be shared without you needing to publicly advertise your areholery to everyone in the high traffic areas. You could have a 'didn't exist in my day' section and a 'share your outdated google search results' one.

@KittyFantastico I'd bet on that too. 100yrs ago we just executed shell shocked soldiers, none of these wishy washy modern ptsd excuses.

Vodkacranberryplease · 26/07/2020 20:55

I find the lack of ability to focus, to read, and to comprehend on here astounding. Not from the people with ADHD I might add.

No, it's the 'it's the parents fault' bad diet brigade who literally have been unable to read and comprehend post after post where people clearly state that they don't have junk diet, have good upbringings etc.

Do you think it's some kind of learning disability? Is it fair to just label them fuckwits without understanding that possibly their brains are just not capable of logic or reason?

Maybe it's a nutritional deficiency?

Heatherjayne1972 · 26/07/2020 21:03

One of mine has ADD. Adhd without the hyperactive bit
His father refuses to accept this - it’s ‘bad parenting ‘ apparently - oh the irony!
Anyway since diagnosis I can see traits of this in other family members
It’s real. It really is.

My guess is that there’s a genetic link - not diet. Not discipline just genes

suggestionsplease1 · 26/07/2020 21:16

@BoogleMcGroogle

MrsZola ADHD and autism are not the same condition. They are both neurodevelopmental conditions and often co-morbid, but the diagnostic criteria are very different and the DSM is clear that they are separate conditions.

I'm a psychologist. My son has ADHD. Part of the debate about whether ADHD exists in professional circles is because of differing ontological views. Its a philosophical divide. It's clearly not an thing' in the same way as a lamp, a dog or a pebble are a thing. There are no physical tests ( brain scans, blood tests) that can predict whether a child shows the cluster of symptoms associated with ADHD and no clear causal pathway. It's strongly associated with genetics, but sometimes also environmental factors ( eg trauma). At best, at present it's a description of a cluster of behaviours, mostly associated with executive skills that we know to be ameliorated by certain drugs and (possibly to a lesser extent, much to the chagrin of my esteemed colleagues) therapeutic and educational interventions. My son shows pretty classic ADHD behaviours and so it's useful for us to think in those terms in order to understand how to help him, but I do understand ( If not agree) with the philosophical perspective of professionals ( psychologists and psychiatrists, not just ignorant randomers) who argue it's not helpful to determine it as 'a thing'.

I don't know if this has already been mentioned in threads but there is real progress on identifying ADHD from brain scans..

"In ADHD, several machine learning approaches have shown relatively high classification accuracy based on the structure or the function of the brain. In our own studies, for example, we have shown up to 80-90 per cent classification accuracy of individual patients based on fMRI and structural MRI data and we even showed high classification accuracy for ADHD of over 80 per cent compared to autism based on structural MRI."

Rubia, K. (2018). Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Its Clinical Translation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 1-23. doi:doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00100

TrainspottingWelsh · 26/07/2020 21:36

If fuckwits apply the same level of critical thought and comprehension to their diet it goes without saying they must have a nutritional deficiency. But if you hang on a moment I'll copy and paste some random outdated shite about malnourishment and we can use it as irrefutable evidence it's the cause of fuckwittery.

It isn't even the stupidity that gets me. They can't help their difficulties bless them. It's the fact these people must be aware they are fuckwits, but instead of staying quiet and hoping nobody notices they desperately want to broadcast their stupidity, almost as though they are proud of their deficiencies.

Whiskyinajar · 27/07/2020 08:21

My son who is now 17 was diagnosed owed with ASD aged 7, six months later he was diagnosed with ADHD as well.

For the hard of thinking ...my son has two parents, was planned for and had a stable normal home life.

At age 7 my son couldn’t read....long after many of his peers were free readers. Medication for ADHD was a game changer for my son because after six months he finally mastered reading. Within two years he had caught up academically with his peers.

At 17 he has moderate learning difficulties and attends a college for students with SEN. His ADHD is more inattentive than hyperactive which was why his diagnosis was a shock on top of the ASD.

Funnily enough as an adult I am now diagnosed with ADHD too. I was diagnosed at The Maudsley Hospital using Qb testing as well as extensive assessment of my childhood records. I don’t take medication as I prefer to try other ways of managing things.

I strongly suspect my biological father who indulged in all kinds of risk taking behaviours as a child and young man also has ADHD. In his 70s he now has Alzheimer’s and more evidence is emerging that those with neurodevelopment issues have an increased risk of dementia.

Siameasy · 27/07/2020 08:37

I’m not diagnosed but considering seeing the doctor as I think I have it although I am scared of being ridiculed.
It would explain so much - my lack of self awareness and that, at school, I often managed to zone out for entire lessons then it would emerge we had homework set and obviously I didn’t realise...
My DD and I chew things and grind our teeth like crazy too.
One thing is I feel like I see things far more lucidly and in greater detail than other people. I notice everything-everything is intense (eg sound). I don’t get how people say “uh I didn’t notice”. Is that common?
I will say though that my anxiety and brain fog has much improved since I started eating lower carb and exercising.

stargirl1701 · 27/07/2020 08:49

It definitely exists but the way we chose 'school' our children doesn't help.

I had a P7 class with 4 diagnosed boys. We did a full week residential of forest school and by the end of the week 3 of the boys were sleeping normally and much calmer and much more focussed than in class. One boy was still struggling though. Still awake half the night and still unable to be still and calm and focussed.

I think a fully outdoor forest school kindergarten stage (age 3-7) would benefit all of our children. I'm a member of Upstart in Scotland who are campaigning for this.

Siameasy · 27/07/2020 08:54

I agree with the Forest School, I think part of the problem is we force ourselves into man made boxes and then complain when we don’t fit. My DD and I feel a great calmness in nature. Outdoors is the only place she doesn’t fidget/climb on me etc

Buttybach · 27/07/2020 11:50

[quote Galvantula]@Buttybach your life sounds similar to mine. Home cooked food, not much junk, hours of sport a week, fairly ordinary life.
Diagnosed in early 40s.

I was mostly just fixated on reading as a child although I did love our ZX Spectrum when we got it Grin

I got in trouble at school for daydreaming, chatting way too much and not finishing my work in time. I got through school ok and scraped through a degree.

Always with a feeling of overwhelm in certain situations and a trail of losing and forgetting things.

Arrival of DC added a new layer of chaos, mess and a million things to remember. 🙈

I had zero idea that my problems could actually have an explanation, completely thought I was just useless.[/quote]
You do sound extremely similar to me x Have your children been diagnosed?
I too found that the arrival of my DD made things ten times worse. I think it was the hormones.

Galvantula · 27/07/2020 14:02

@Buttybach My oldest is being assessed at school for similar difficulties to me. That's how I ended up reading about ADHD and having a lightbulb moment. I only got diagnosed this month.

I think lack of sleep as well as hormones maybe. I totally thought it was sleep deprivation meaning I forgot everything and couldn't cope. It never got better once they all stopped bf and eventually slept though 😏

HoldMyLobster · 27/07/2020 14:38

My DS is just as symptomatic outdoors as indoors, so something like Forest School wouldn't make a difference.

But it did help that his teachers were very understanding of his difficulties at school - they accepted that he had to fidget, and worked around it.

His school issues came when his executive functioning problems, lack of working memory and slow processing started to really hinder him academically.

His teachers did their best to help, but until he was assessed by an ed psych it was hard to know how to help him because we didn't understand exactly what was difficult for him.

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